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DVD A Tale of Two Sisters (Deluxe Edition)
Two young sisters recovering from an unnamed trauma must face a mysterious past in this excellent South Korean shocker. A worldwide hit upon its release and based on an old Korean fairy tale; two sisters (wonderfully played by Su-jeong Lim and Geun-yeong Mun) come to live with their cold and distant father and turn-on-a-dime stepmother in a house where nothing is as it seems. A wonderfully haunting score, starkly beautiful imagery, and a labyrinthine plot that twists and turns at every dark corner all set the stage for a riveting and often terrifying guessing game of a movie. Equal parts drama, mystery, and ghost story, A Tale of Two Sisters is a richly complex and challenging cinematic treat that may very well demand repeat viewings. --Matt Wold
Review(s): DVD A Tale of Two Sisters (Deluxe Edition)
More than just a horror movie
As with all good movies, the surface betrays what is underneath. Kim Jee-Woon's "A Tale of Two Sisters," is an eerie mystery that is lusciously more about psychological terror and heightened looming trepidation than it is about cheap long hair or gore.
Based on a Korean legend, the movie tells the story of two sisters who come back home after time spent in a "hospital" for unrevealed reasons. The elder sister, Su-Mi (Im Soo-Jung) is characterized as always having her younger sister Su-Yeon (Moon Geun-Yeung) back. Su-Yeon, predictably simply wants things to go smoothly. Conversely, Su-Mi harbors some acrimony towards her father (Kim Kap-Soo). Moreover, Su-Mi along the same vein harbors a strong resentment for Dad's new (and young) wife Eun-Joo (Yeom Jeong-Ah). No love lost there and Eun-Joo is not the poster child for the loving maternal type. As a matter of course, she turns out to be the wicked stepmother. Along the "no love lost" scenario - Eun-Joo's ill conceived attempts to mask her utter contempt for her new Su-Mi and Su-Yeon are failures.
If the family ill-will was not enough, things start to take a turn for the worst when a ghost begins to trouble both daughters as well as Eun-Joo. When Eun-Joo's precious birds mysteriously come up dead, the suspicion, mistrust, and rage in the abode is bumped up yet another notch. Eun-Joo vents her spleen on defenseless Su-Yeon by locking her up in a closet. Su-Mi, as mentioned previously, having Su-Yeon's back predictably seeks revenge.
As viewers we need to be asking ourselves: Is this a case of genuine paranormal haunting? Not to dampen the suspense - no spoilers here: What is going on with this family? One needs to watch the movie then to figure out: How did all this even begin? Curious I was about: Why does not the father step in and put a stop to all this madness and cat fighting? And just what the hell is going on? To give Kim Jee-Woon's huge credit, he is able to pull back on the easy answers so as to compel the viewers to stay until the end of the shocking story.
To say anymore about "A Tale of Two Sisters" would not be fair to viewers who have yet to see it. Even if you intuit what is really happening the movie is still a compelling watch. If you remove the cheesy horror elements, what vestiges remain is really a tragic family drama. The tragedy is, at least on one level, why "A Tale of Two Sisters" is seen as a "cut above" (no, no pun intended). Proof positive that Korean filmmakers are "coming in from the cold" (no pun intended again) the film is nonetheless unquestionably stylishly shot. "A Tale of Two Sisters" is the kind of movie that keeps the viewer at the edge of their seat (or bed) proving that there is more "Asian Extreme" than "One Missed Call," "Audition," and "The Ring."
Miguel Llora
the power of guilt
A Tale of Two Sisters might be the finest Asian horror yet. It takes the trope of the Asian Ghost Movie--where spoken-word lore acts as metaphor for the cycle of violence, cruelty, and victim-psychology--and spins it into something a little more compelling, and certainly a little more sinister. Where a movie like, say, The Ring (or perhaps Whispering Corridors), deals with urban folklore or the myth of rumor, A Tale of Two Sisters is set up as fairytale. And where other Asian horrors use the idea of a cyclical "curse"--often a rage harbored by a woman scorned--to suggest that each victim of cruelty in turn creates new victims, A Tale of Two Sisters is about a different kind of curse: the horror of memory, and the hauntings of guilt, it would seem.
Two sisters have returned to live with their aloof, impotent father, and with their stepmother, a cruel and icily beautiful woman. As stranger and stranger things fill the house, the two girls perceive that they are being victimized by the evil new mother. And the stepmother is particularly human in that she retaliates when she, too, feels herself wronged. The father is interesting if only for his absence: the women of the house fight for his attention and affection, and he withdraws further into himself, terrified they will make themselves "ill, again." As pieces of each individual history slowly comes to the surface, in a slow process of remembering and revelation, the story becomes infinitely more horrifying.
Modeled after the classic fairy tale character cast (siblings, aloof father, conniving stepmother), the characters quickly realize that something in their large guest mansion is amiss. And while certainly many ghostly horrors follow, the real horror is what has happened in this house, and what has willingly, deliberately been forgotten. And that's exactly as it should be.
A Tale of Two Sisters, for all its ornate convolution, is an ultimately satisfying movie. I first saw it in its limited theatrical release in the United States, and its moments of ghost-terror were strong enough to cause a great deal of squirming and crying out in the audience. But these ghostly sequences are not what carry the movie. Instead, its marvelous story, melancholy and incredibly devastating--and made only more fulfilling with repeated viewings and clarity--evolves this movie into so much more than a simple horror film. And its terrible denouement is incredibly satisfying, in that it ultimately singles out who was truly in the wrong all along, and exacts justice and vengeance on that person in a truly oogly scene.
Other Asian horrors have used the spoken-word urban myth/folklore trope as a metaphor that steps lightly around the cyclical nature of abuse and victim's psychology, but A Tale of Two Sisters is a grand achievement in that in reenvisions the genre and considers a different kind of victim's psychology, the sort fueled by complete and total guilt.
Vastly Overrated - Nice production, acting, sets; Irretrievably incoherent story at its core
Like most I watched "Tale of Two Sisters" after having read a number of breathless, rave reviews, and I have to say it's been a long, long time since I've been this disappointed - no, this profoundly annoyed - with a film. I was expecting something great, "a masterpiece" as so many are willing to call it - it would appear that a lot of people are willing to gloss over the horrible incoherence of the story precisely because they want so bad for it to be... "a masterpiece." Well, wishing won't make it so - or as the great lyricist and percussionist Mr. Peart put it: "You can twist perceptions, reality won't budge."
(And incidentally, I think a review is only as worthwhile as its honesty - I flatly refuse to sugar-coat a lame movie for the sake of "Helpful" votes.)
Yes, "Tale of Two Sisters" has a certain sense of style, the cinematography is rich and well-photographed throughout, the acting is very good, the dialog is well done - though certainly not outstanding in any of those elements.
The story, unfortunately, is an incoherent, unresolved mess. "Surprise ending," indeed.
Aside from the positive technical aspects listed above, I think the reason people are so willing to shower "Tale of Two Sisters" with the comically-undeserved label of "masterpiece," is the same reason people give historic figures like Kant, Hegel, Freud and the like the label of "great thinker." If you say something nonsensical enough and wrap it up in a slick enough veneer, you will invariably find plenty of people willing to confuse incoherence with profundity. In other words, "I don't understand it, therefore it must be deep."
I say: That there emperor is buck nekkid.
Reality check: Sometimes the reason something is difficult or impossible to comprehend is because its author never made it comprehensible to begin with. "Two Sisters" is a perfect example.
An essential requirement of good storytelling is to maintain a solid logical framework no matter what plot twists, misdirections, red herrings or stylistic deceptions you may weave into it. "Tale of Two Sisters" is a game of logical 52-pick-up. It starts with a promising setup but in the midst of the plot-thickening process utterly defaults on the necessity of locking into a coherent, final set of facts underlying the intriguing questions. Instead the writer tosses half a dozen possible explanations skyward, lets them drop in a random jumble, then hastily flips out the lights and runs for the door.
Compare this with "Donnie Darko," "The Machinist," or the excellent Hong Kong thrillers "Koma" and "The Eye." In each of these the audience is led through an increasingly-confusing series of events; in each there is a surprise ending that plays off of carefully-constructed misconceptions maintained up to that point. But most importantly, each is an excellent thriller because there is one, solid, definite truth beneath all of the deceptive ruses. It is that jarring contrast between the carefully-constructed false premises and the actual, final fact, that makes each story work.
If instead you omit any definite final truth altogether, as does "Tale of Two Sisters," what remains is a meaningless hash of arbitrary possibilities with no reality whatever to anchor them.
It is no accident that there are dozens of "theories" as to what the hell actually happens in "Tale of Two Sisters": The writer and director didn't bother to complete the story. Put simply, we don't know what really happened, and we never will.
Is the younger sister a ghost? Apparently. Is the older sister an alter-ego of the stepmother? Why was the older sister in a mental hospital? Or was it both of them? If the younger sister is a ghost, how did she die? Did she get beaten to death inside of that sack or was that something the older sister imagined? If so, who did it, the older sister or the stepmother? We see scenes of each doing it, with no explanation as to which is the case. In either case, why was she killed? If the younger sister was beaten to death in a sack, why is she later shown being killed by a wardrobe containing her mother's body falling on top of her? How much of this happened in the past and how much in the present? Is the stepmother a psycho? How did the mother die? If the stepmother killed her, what is the explanation for the two of them living in the same house together? If the father did it, why? Why did the dinner guest's wife go into a violent seizure? Who was the greasy kid she saw under the sink? Why would that ghost appear to someone largely irrelevant to the story? Etc., etc., ad infinitum.
The only possible answer to any and all of these questions is: Anybody's guess.
Since there's nothing identified as the final, actual fact, they all remain as arbitrary possibilities, and there is no logical thread tying any of it together. The only proper, rational response to an arbitrary assertion is: Who cares?
A writer bailing out on his responsibility to construct a coherent story is a phenomenon deserving designation as: contemptible laziness in storytelling - not "masterpiece," no matter what the sets and technical aspects look like.
"Tale of Two Sisters" is a pretty building with no internal framework - it collapses into the void where a solid, logical story with a coherent resolution needed to be. This film exists for the sole purpose of making fools of fans of Asian horror who are looking for another "Ju-On." Save some time and justifiable anger and pick up Takashi Shimizu's excellent little fright-fest instead, or any of the four films mentioned above.
Regardless of how it's embellished, packaged and promoted, a motion picture is only as good as the story at its core, and this one is irretrievably flawed.
Related DVD's A Tale of Two Sisters (Deluxe Edition)
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